Maddox
Age Seven
* * *
My head cranks back when a thud booms into my ears. It sounded the same as the oomph that whizzed out of Landon’s mouth when he beat Caidyn to the front of the line, and Caidyn showed his dislike by punching Landon in the stomach, but it was squeaky like a mouse, and it hurt my chest.
We’re in line at the carpool at the front of our school. It’s one of those fancy-schmancy places parents pay lots of money for their children to attend. Some students even sleep here. My brothers, sister, and I don’t because we live a short drive from Seacoast Private Academy, but students like the one a bully just pushed over stay here all the time.
I don’t know if their mommies and daddies can’t take care of them or if they need extra help with their studies, but whatever the reason, they’re here day and night. I like school, but if I had to be here twenty-four-seven, I’d vomit. My teachers are cranky bums. My parents are not.
“Hold my spot.” My baby sister, Justine, raises her eyes to mine. She only just started at my school this year. She’s a big girl now, but she doesn’t need to be brave. She has four older brothers. That’s all the bravery she needs. “Please make sure Mommy doesn’t leave me here.”
When Justine nods, promising me she won’t make me sleep at the school, I race toward the little girl holding her grazed knee. She’s sitting on the footpath, and big wet blobs are filling her eyes. “Are you okay?”
My heart whacks against my chest so fast I’m certain I broke something when she lifts her head to look at me. My mommy says my eyes are the color of the ocean. This little girl’s pretty eyes are blue like mine, but since her hair is as dark as a starless night, they appear as big as the moon.
“Don’t cry,” I stammer out when a salty droplet rolls down her cheek. “If you cry, he’ll think he won.”
When she sucks in a shaky breath, a clear sign she’s trying to be brave, I narrow my eyes like an angry bear before glaring at the boy who pushed her over. “You hurt her, you bozo!”
I’m big for my age, but I’m not as big as the grade six boy I’m yelling at. He’s the size of a giant, and the fist he’s racing toward my nose is bigger than a watermelon. It collides into my face with a crack and sends me tumbling backward.
I hear my older brothers shout my name as they run to protect me, but I can’t see them since the girl I defended is catching the blood running out of my nose like she can’t catch cooties. “Don’t cry,” she reminds me when silly tears prick my eyes. “If you cry, he’ll think he won.”
1
Maddox
Present Day
* * *
As the bell above Stamina’s door jingles in my ears, my glove-covered fist collides into Saint’s nose with a thud. My older brother is usually more on the ball when it comes to deflecting the jabs I hit him with when we go a couple of rounds in the ring. He isn’t quite as tall as me—Landon secured the title of being both the oldest and tallest in our family, and Caidyn, although both wiser and older than me, is a good inch shorter, but Saint knows how to command the ring.
We’ve been sparring together since we were kids. My dad, although a little chubby around the midsection when he sailed past fifty, always implemented a strict exercise regime for my brothers and me. At the start, I thought it was about peak physical fitness. I learned otherwise when my baby sister grew into her lanky legs and teenybopper bra.
My parents will never admit it to Justine’s face, but she wasn’t planned. Dad was a week out from having a vasectomy, and with four boys under the age of five, Mom had closed up shop years earlier—around the time I popped out.
Justine, as forever stubborn as she is, had other plans.
My mom was so convinced she was having another boy, she booted me out of the nursery, touched up the paint my older brothers chipped while tackling their newest sibling into submission, then chose the perfect name to go with Landon, Sebastian, Caidyn, and Maddox.
Oh, did I forget to mention Saint’s real name is Sebastian? We call him Saint because he’s nothing close to saintly. Town Stud is the only title his name will ever wear, and he’s more than happy to keep it that way.
Justin was a tough name. It belonged to a person who wasn’t to be messed with. That’s why when ‘Justin’ came screaming into the world weighing an impressive nine pounds without any dangly bits between ‘his’ legs, Mom tacked an ‘E’ onto the end of ‘his’ name and went about her day.
That’s very much how my parents operate. They’re strict and a little unknowledgeable when it comes to electronics, but they love their kids to the core. I don’t think there’s anything we could do that would see us shunted out of their lives for good. Not even Justine getting ‘friendly’ with a boy she just met in the hot tub on her eighteenth birthday saw them giving her the cold shoulder. They said she was an adult, and in turn, they’d treat her like one.
She didn’t get off quite so easily with her older siblings.
We watched her like a hawk—we still do.
Unlike the woman responsible for the brand-new shiner forming under Saint’s right eye, Justine has lived a sheltered life. She has no clue how cruel the world can be, and if I have it my way, she never will. A big brother’s job is to protect his baby sister. Nothing should come before that—although I see things changing when women without our blood are thrown into the mix. We’ve already noticed it with Landon. I don’t see Caidyn being too far behind him.
In a way, I’m lucky. With Justine having four older brothers and me being the youngest of them all, the weight on my shoulders is nowhere near as heavy as Landon’s and Saint’s. That doesn’t mean I can get slack, though. As my father always says, “Slacking off is the quickest way to an average life.”
After drifting my eyes from Demi Petretti, voted most attractive, most likely to succeed, and all-around badass by every male in a five-mile radius of Seacoast Private Academy senior year almost four years ago, I punish Saint’s ribs with a left-right-left combination.
He groans through the pain of a possible cracked rib, but not once does he stray his eyes away from the area Demi is mingling. I can’t say I blame him. That girl doesn’t just have the smarts to be in the top two percent of students at our school, she also was in the top two percent in the state. Add that to the fact she’s as hot as sin, and you’ve got a lethal combination any man would be lucky to stumble upon.
Unfortunately for me, by the time I worked up the courage to do something about an almost decade-long crush, Saint announced an interest in Demi. That put her off-limits, and the reminder she’s out of reach has me punishing Saint with my fists so rebelliously, he has no choice but to man up and hit me back.
We go blow for blow for the next several minutes, only stopping when the coach from our high school wrestling team mistakes our fight as literal. “This is why I invoked the sibling code. You two will kill each other one day.”
The redness lining Coach Merritt’s face triples when Saint has the audacity to laugh. High school feels as if it was decades ago when you’re a senior in college, but you can be assured as fuck I haven’t worked up the courage to laugh in a teacher’s face just yet. I’m not a coward by any means, I just know how to pick my battles. Coach Merritt isn’t the wrestling coach of a state championship team for no reason. His size alone exposes he’d face no issues putting Saint on his ass, much less a cabinet full of trophies in our high school gymnasium.